e He made an elaborate provision
for plants which depended for its efficiency on the presence of
quadrupeds, He nevertheless, after all, neglected to place the
quadrupeds in the same islands as the plants! Now, I submit that such
abortive attempts at adaptation bring the thesis of the special
creationists to a _reductio ad absurdum_; so that the only possible
explanation before us is, that while the seeds of these plants were able
to float to the islands, the quadrupeds were not able to swim.

Perhaps in sheer desperation, however, the special creationists will try
to take refuge in the assumption that oceanic islands differ from
continents in not having been the scenes of creative power, and have
therefore depended on immigration for their inhabitants. But here again
there is no standing-room; for we have already seen that oceanic islands
are particularly rich in peculiar species which occur nowhere else in
the world; so that, as a matter of fact, if the special creation theory
is true, we must conclude that oceanic islands have been the theatres of
extraordinary creative activity; although an exception has always been
carefully made to the detriment of frogs, toads, newts, and mammals,
save only such as are able to fly.

If space permitted, I might adduce several other highly instructive
facts in this argument from geographical distribution; but I will
content myself with mentioning only one other. When Mr. Wallace was at
the Malay Archipelago, he observed that the quadrupeds inhabiting the
various islands belonged to the same or to closely allied species. But
he also observed that all the quadrupeds inhabiting the islands lying on
one side of an imaginary sinuous line, differed widely from the
quadrupeds inhabiting the islands lying on the other side of that line.
Now, soundings showed that in exact correspondence with this imaginary
sinuous line the sea was much deeper than in any other part of the
Archipelago. Consequently, how beautiful is the explanation. We have
only to suppose that at some previous time the sea bottom was raised
sufficiently to unite all the islands on each side of the deep water
into two great tracts of land, separated from one another by the deep
strait of water. Each of these great tracts of land would then have had
their own distinctive kinds of quadrupeds--just as the American
quadrupeds are now distinct from the European; for the comparatively
narrow strait between the then Malay contine